... other pictures not taken ...

I guess I just wanted to brag on my daughter a little more here ... you know ... we frequently post about how she is full of joy and faith and expresses that by continuing to meet the normal activities of life with great gusto ... but there are also pictures that we don't show on the website, of course .... pictures of battling the sickness and nausea caused by the chemo, for example ... pictures of her quietly sitting by the window with tears in her eyes, looking toward the heavens, and somehow believing a hundred times more than I do there is a God that is with her still ... pictures of her sitting in a doctor's office and somehow facing with thanksgiving that her "good" news is that she gets to have double lung surgery and more chemo.

Like many people I would imagine, I have friends that run the gamut of political thought and religious persuasion. And yes, I have some friends that do not believe there is a God at all. They, and other intellectual atheists are sometimes able to make quite brilliant arguments supporting their position. And as much as I respect their intellectual abilities and powers of reason and logic ... the very things they often point to as proof there is no God, to me are the very things that prove there must be.

I'm not going to take up the time and space here that would be required to completely flesh out my argument ... but I will make this observation that is very real to me. I don't look at the challenges facing Amanda and think to myself there is no God. On the contrary, I look at how Amanda is dealing with all those challenges and think to myself there MUST be a God. Having said that ... why doesn't God just physically heal her now? I don't know. But I also have another question in return ... why does God so obviously dwell within her through all of this? What I am getting at is this ... the way Amanda is dealing with this situation is not "normal." It is not just another part of her "humanity." There is something about it that is, in my humble opinion, supernatural and unquantifiable. There is something about it all that appears to have some attributes of God from within. And I have seen this phenomenon in others through the years. It isn't something that is manufactured or just all "worked up" so as to put on some religious show. It is real, and so much so that one can literally sense it.

Look ... I am not a theologian or a religious scholar ... but I have been around the block enough times to know the difference between what people can do on their own, and what people can do with the character, nature, and likeness of God working through them.

Just sayin'
dad